Happy New Year Krilltopia!
I've been working on exploring Santa Fe, especially the museums and stores. My two main destinations have been the New Mexico Museum of Art and the bead store by the library, Glorianna's Beads. I've also just been going into any store that slightly interest me so that I know more about downtown.
The New Mexico Museum of Art is one of the most iconic buildings downtown. Its been around forever for an American building but its a toddler in the centuries of Santa Fe. I've been to their gift shop before and I like their jewelry a lot. The museum itself is currently 80% a retrospective for an artist I had never heard of before, Gustave Baumann.
Baumann is an incredible artist, his work with color in his woodblocks use color in ways I cannot understand. It's amazing. And then it just keeps going on and on. Once you get to the largest gallery of the retrospective, you see Baumann's work go from very similar woodblocks that flood the space to native inspired illustrations and commercial work. The work stops admiring the landscape and people, becoming consumable media for those who live outside the state.
Upstairs continues this retrospective somehow, the curators should consider editing down their choices. The last two rooms have their 20th centaury art collection, mainly just real and imagined portraits of native people to sell to art collectors and the people back east who romanticize something they specifically drove out and destroyed in their own states. There is one portrait of a white teen boy (one of the few portraits where the sitter is named...) who won a contest and the reward was a trip to NYC and the painting. Second place's prize was a new saddle, which the boy would've preferred. Its a very cute portrait that hints at life at the time.
The best part of the museum is the architecture, you often go through huge wooden doors and the exterior is a lovely example of Santa Fe's unique style. Overall the museum is alright but I probably won't go back unless they have a retrospective on someone I care about. Someone I'd actually want to see four galleries of.
On the other hand, the bead store was a dream. I bought a pre-Eisenhower dime charm and some weird stuff for super cheap.... this is dangerous for me.
I've also stopped in some gift stores that were pretty lame and the toy store that is even more dangerous than the bead store because they sell their Calico Critters at full price... but those little guys remind me so much of The Boyfriend.
That's all for my downtown exploration so far, one weekends worth.
Bye!!
